Scrapbook page 104
Two behind-the-scenes peeks at how René and I thought about the colours in the illustrations and storyboard for La Séptima Bala.
The first one shows the thumbnail-storyboard we ended up with as we agreed on each illustration’s colours, to check that it was working across the whole story as well as in the individual scenes. We also indicated on here (not shown) which one of us was allocated to actually colour each scene, once the colours themselves had been established.
The second is really just a collection of some of the things I found left in the old project directory (not shown, for example, are any of the pictures of rusted tin cans and their labels from the 1900s, or newspapers from the Mexican Revolution). We looked at many, many more sources than this, of course, and were very careful both about deciding which colours we would use and how we would use them. So although it’s just a fragment, this summary gives an idea of the kind of things we were looking at as we worked towards the final palette. Of particular significance are some of the paintings by Francisco Goitia. René introduced me to this Mexican artist’s work when we started on this project. Goitia was born in 1882, so his paintings are especially pertinent for the location and time in which the Bala story is set. He experienced the bloodshed of the Mexican Revolution first hand — from Wikipedia: “He joined the army of Francisco Villa, offering to paint for the cause. Villa dismissed the idea, ordering that Goitia go into battle to see how uniforms became painted in blood.”